Chapter 11 “It, not she, it.”

“Get this fucking thing off my neck.” Charlie unbuckled the collar from Rosie’s neck. She finally took a deep breath. The lift trundled straight down. The mapping pulse showed a single narrow corridor heading south, ending in a larger room. She sent more pulses and something else began to take shape, something thick and metal. The lift stopped deep below The Grand.

Rosie could taste the stale air as the rear of the lift opened. Charlie levelled the sawn off and took a step out. A sense of dread filled Rosie, enough fear that the dreamlike state forced its way out.

A tiny dot of red light flashed on Charlie’s bare arm. Rosie peeked out and saw something she hadn’t thought about in years. As the fluorescent lights flickered on Rosie caught a glimpse of a figure advancing along the corridor. For a moment she felt eight years old again, waking from the same nightmare of being chased by killer robots. Only now the faux feminine form pursuing her felt altogether more frightening.

A schematic flashed into her view and Rosie understood what the tiny red light meant. She grabbed Charlie and pulled her back into the lift. Charlie fell backwards slowly while Rosie bolted forward.

The red light had grown into a steady beam, projected from the cross shaped face of the killer robot. Rosie felt the heat as she pushed through it. Lights flickered slowly for Rosie, the white fluorescent became washed out by glowing red. As she approached the machine Rosie saw the mechanical arms. They gave away the purpose behind the design.

One side ended in an oversized claw, wide enough to grip a soft limb, or throat, and sharp enough to sever it. The other forearm served as housing for an angular blade, with a serrated back. It extended as sections were added from the upper arm. A killer robot, straight from her childhood nightmares.

Instinctive fear stirred in Rosie. She fought it back and focused on the data in her eyes. Heat built as Rosie drew within reach, the charging laser all but primed. Her quick fingers ejected the four pin connector and lodged it precisely in the exposed neck of the machine. An electric snap fired through the connector. Overloading the charged spinal power cells in the machine, triggering a full shutdown.

Light bulbs sparked and shattered. Overhead vents hissed clouds of carbon gas that filled the corridor, set off by the heat. Rosie lost her footing and slammed into one wall then the other. Time snapped back as the system displayed a red outline in the mist, and a countdown.

“Charlie?!” Rosie yelled.

“Yeah!” Rosie heard the pain in her voice, and needed her to move.

“Throw my knife, now!” Rosie pushed herself back into the dreamlike state. It felt like walking into fire.

Each step hurt more than the last but Rosie made it to the inhumanly still machine. She pushed against the metal and felt it shift. Too fast, Rosie thought. Ahead of her the knife she needed cut a wake through the clouds of gas. It took more burning effort to pluck it from the air. Rosie fought a tremor in her hand as she stripped the first screw head completely. The second came out clean, as did the other two.

Metal clanged against metal as the machine hit the floor, driving Rosie’s knife up and slashing her hand. Somehow a cutting pain felt like relief against the fire burning through her nerves. Everything began to speed up as Rosie felt the sharp edge of the access panel rip away. One last burning breath gave her enough to shift the four pin from the neck and click it into place. Time snapped back as Rosie bounced and tumbled away from the machine.

Charlie grunted as she dragged Rosie back. “Wake up!” Another heave sent her down onto broken glass. “Rosie!”

“I’m ok.” Rosie lied. Through the clearing vapours the inhuman figure shifted.

It’s arms bent over backwards while its legs turned at the hip. Finally standing with its torso facing away while the deadly red eye faced them. Charlie’s fear bought her enough energy to move them both again. “Stop.” Rosie spluttered, “We’re good.” Charlie couldn’t or wouldn’t hear her. She did hear the faux feminine machine speak.

“Please ident new admin.”

“Rosie.”

“Confirmed. Please designate protocol.” Rosie picked the safest thing she saw on the list inside her eyes.

“Bodyguard.”

“Confirmed. Please designate principal.”

“Say your name. Trust me.” Rosie wanted to laugh but even smiling hurt.

“Charlie.”

“Confirmed.”

The light pulsed green as the torso rotated and the machine legs clanked round. The faux feminine form strode through the clearing steam towards them. “Principal Charlie is in distress. Recommend immediate evac.”

“I’m fine.” Charlie spoke to Rosie, she couldn’t even look at the machine. “Get it to scan you.” Rosie checked her own stats first, red levels on everything, but dropping quickly. The machine ran its own scan.

“Admin Rosie’s vitals are outside expected parameters. Scans indicate fatal cardiac event. Possible scanning error. Recommend immediate evac.”

“Sounds about right.” Rosie laughed, then groaned.

“Please remain still. I will return with medical supplies and light refreshments.” Charlie let out her own laugh turned groan.

“A fucking clanker bringing me refreshments.” The black armoured bot slipped into the shadowed hall, its shape disappearing as the clanking remained.

Charlie’s attention turned to Rosie. “You’re burning up and your pulse is racing.”

“I’m ok, just need a minute. Are you ok?” Rosie felt better with each steady breath.

“Shit no, you broke my ribs, and my wrist.” Charlie grinned through the pain. “Beats the alternative.” Charlie motioned to the wall. The laser hadn’t even fired fully and it still left scorch marks.

The robot opened a door down the corridor and the steam ebbed away. A column of shining steel emerged through the thinning gas. Rosie mustered enough effort to slump sideways. The column served as a massive hinge for a door forged from concentric circles of cold rolled steel. “Charlie is that…”

“It’s a vault door, but not what you think, not Vault-Tec and not military.” Rosie examined the door further. Exposed brass coloured locking pins extended from a circular centre. Three numbered dials and no sign of any kind of digital interface.

“It looks old. I can’t do anything with it.” Rosie held up a finger to correct herself. “Yet.”

“Well maybe the robot knows.” Charlie laughed through a wince as she heard herself. “Relax. I’m more concerned with how we’re getting out of here.”

“I’ll ask the robot.”

Charlie grew tense as the robot returned, slowly reaching for the sawn off. Rosie noticed the arms had been swapped from the blade and claw, to triple pronged hands with orb like wrists. Each of the arms gripped a long silver case.

“Emergency go kits. Logs indicate last contact with previous admin was thirty seven thousand two hundred and eight cycles ago. It is therefore statistically improbable that he will need them.”

“Who?” Rosie asked, looking for confirmation. The bot set the cases down and answered.

“Burton Blake.”

“Ask it about the evac.” Charlie slid a case away from the bot without taking her eyes from it. The bot answered Charlie despite not being asked directly.

“Evac may take time to prepare. Do you wish me to begin?”

“Yes.” The bot turned at Rosie’s command. “Wait, do you know anything about this door?”

“This vault door was commissioned and built in secret during the nineteen twenty renovations, under the orders of infamous bootlegger kingpin Boots Drecker. It’s said that Boots had become the richest man—”

“Do you know the combination?” Rosie cut off the historical information.

“No records found.” The bot turned and clanked away to prepare.

The emergency kits proved a welcome find. Vacuum sealed fatigues, dull green not black. Three days of food and water, medkits, and the first thing Charlie grabbed was a submachine gun.

Rosie wouldn’t have guessed the flat, box like shape was a weapon at first. Not without the system showing her the odd calibre and high cyclic rate. It had no normal grips, or stock, instead the body curved round at the front with a hole behind it. Charlie slid a narrow, translucent magazine along the top and pulled the bolt back. She set the weapon within arms reach and unzipped a med kit.

“This’ll hurt.” Rosie barely noticed the cuts on her hand and legs, even as Charlie plucked glass from her wounds.

“Thank you Burton Blake.” Rosie quipped as pulled on the new fatigues and boots. Charlie scowled at Rosie’s joke. She didn’t understand why, until she remembered Charlie’s feelings towards the other gift from Blake on her arm. “What do you think happened to him?”

“Long dead.” Charlie heard movement from down the corridor and reached for a compact submachine gun. “One hour. See what the clanker comes up with, then if we have to, we go back the way we came.” Rosie could see the stress building in Charlie, while she didn’t feel anything but numb, despite being underground once again.

Charlie took a stethoscope from the medkit and held the diaphragm against the cold rolled steel door. She winced as she span the clicking tumbler with her bandaged arm. Rosie began calculating the possible combinations and stopped after it quickly reached into the hundreds of thousands.

“Fuck!” Charlie stepped back from the vault door, her pain adding to her frustration.

“What can I do?” Rosie felt bad for the injuries she’d inflicted on her.

“Here,” Charlie put the stethoscope in Rosie’s ears and held it to the door. “Listen to the clicks, and tell me when you hear a snap. It’s an art not science.” A steady clicking became the only sound Rosie heard. She kept her scepticism to herself, already working on a back up plan.

“Stop!” Rosie opened her eyes and smiled. “I heard a snap.” Charlie scrawled a number on the steel with a grease pencil from the medkit.

“One down, eight to go.”

Two hours of safe cracking had replaced Rosie’s numbness with frustration. “You know I can get the robot to melt this fucking lock right?” Charlie gave her the same answer.

“It’s an art not a science. Quiet your mind.” A smile flashed across her face. “And you did break my wrist so I can’t do it.” Rosie almost apologised again. Instead she took a deep breath and listened to the clicks.

“Wait.” Charlie made one last turn and Rosie heard the snap. The antique vault door that hadn’t opened in a century seemed impenetrable as ever for what felt like another hour.

Craftsmanship of a type long gone from the world before the bombs fell began to awaken. First a brass locking pin shifted with a clunk, then another, and another still. One final thunk shook the corridor around them and a handle ejected from the far side. Charlie’s excitement felt almost contagious, until she locked it away behind a tight stance and a levelled gun.

“Wait, shout the bot.” Rosie saw that Charlie thought this a calculated risk. She didn’t understand it. Rosie had flicked through enough of the code to know that she could shut it down at will.

“Hey...robot!” Rosie didn’t signal the bot, instead opting for the verbal interface. Charlie tensed as the clanking feminine figure emerged for the dark corridor. A glowing red circle set in black armour.

“My previous designation was ex wife number four.” Charlie snorted with amusement. “Admin Rosie may assign a new designation.”

“Do not fucking name it Rosie.” Charlie's amusement vanished.

“Janey. She was a real bitch.”

“Confirmed.”

“Damn it Rosie.” Charlie sighed and Rosie saw the look she knew well by now. An argument being put on hold. “Get it to sweep and clear.”

“Confirmed.” Janey took Charlie’s order, yanked open the heavy door with a screech and scratch of metal and went in first.

“So, Janey was bitch?” Charlie asked. Rosie hadn’t mentioned much about the Vault, she didn’t even like thinking about it.

“She had a thing for John. Jumped on his lap once and started to kiss him.”

“And then?” Charlie had a knowing grin.

“I knocked out two of her teeth with a right hook.” Rosie felt a pang of embarrassment for her actions as a teenager.

“That’s my girl.” Charlie laughed and winced almost immediately. Rosie shared the amusement, but remembered the two months in organic recyc more. And that John got himself assigned the next day. Pain surged through Rosie’s chest, the kind of pain that the device on her arm and in her head could do nothing to moderate.

“Clear.” Janey announced as she came back into the corridor. Charlie gave a follow signal and turned into the underground room. The first person to do so in over a hundred years. Rosie levelled her compact submachine gun, and followed.

Inside lay a recreation of the room upstairs. The same leather seating, the same large four poster bed and desk area. Even a simulated skyline of the old world outside fake windows. A slab of shining marble served as a bar, stools and bottles long missing from the room upstairs. Something else looked different down here.

The system drew Rosie’s eyes to the weapons first. Behind glass lay a compound bow, polymer arms topped with cams. Arrows with broad, sharp heads beside it.

In a case to the other side sat a rifle unlike anything Rosie had seen before. Metal set in polished and smooth wood. The magazine behind the wooden grip and thumb hole. A barrel set in a square frame, floated to increase accuracy, and topped with a bipod and advanced scope.

Charlie drew her away with a hiss, signalling her to stack on a door. Rosie did. It’s clear anyway, she thought to herself. The first door opened into a large bathroom, glass boxes for showers and a sunken shell of pure white for the tub. Rosie swept and turned to the next door, finding Charlie unusually slow to catch up.

Rosie pushed the ornate handle on the door and strode into the next room, weapon aimed and ready out of habit. She made it a full three paces into the steel walled room before stopping in stunned silence.

“A lab, a real lab!” Rosie had read about the rooms devoted purely to science in her books, she never thought she’d be in one. Banks of servers and storage towers lined the walls. Long dimmed leds and screens blinking into life again. Rosie bolted for the nearest terminal, knocking the plastic stool aside. “I’m in. Running a search.”

Rosie scanned for anything Vault or military. Considering the age and amount of time the computers had sat dormant, the answer returned quickly. Rosie ran it again before telling Charlie. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Charlie returned Rosie’s disappointment

“It’s a closed system, it’s nearly all research data.”

“Relax, I didn’t think it’d have coordinates. He was a smart one after all.” Charlie tried to keep her focused. “See if you can open that.” Charlie pointed to a half tube of glass set into the wall. Rosie tried to access it through the terminal. For a moment everything looked corrupted, the symbols on the screen made no sense. After a moment lines and shapes became familiar again.

“You can read that?” Charlie sounded surprised as she tapped the screen.

“Yeah.” Rosie answered in a confused tone.

“It’s in Chinese.”

“What’s Chinese?” Charlie laughed. Rosie could read the screen perfectly well. “It’s a little fragged but it says Project Crimson drago. What’s a drago?”

“Crimson dragon maybe.” Charlie answered before she asked. “It’s a giant flying lizard that breathes fire.” Rosie’s eyes went wide in awe. “They’re not real.”

“That’s probably for the best.” Rosie found herself oddly disappointed.

“Got it.” The tube split down the middle and retracted. Charlie flinched and drew on the rough person shape for a moment. Sleek and black, shiny sections morphing into matte plate armour. Topped with a reflective orange faceplate of harsh angles. Rosie looked back at the screen. “It’s a stealth suit.”

The stealth suit seemed made for a man. Figures, Rosie thought, as she saw the attached footwear, easily three sizes too big for her. The connected gloves looked too wide and the chest too broad. She ran her hand down a sleeve, the material made up of hexagonal cells. Set atop something that felt familiar. It felt like an impact protection pane on a Vault-suit.

As she turned the glove over a thin pulse of blue light shot through the hexagonal channels, up to the shoulder and down the chest to the hip. It took effort to peel the open, revealing a braided cable in the sleeve that ended in a four pin connector.

The code in the suit had Blake’s signature running through, patched on top of the existing protocols. Rosie followed his work, seeing the improvements he’d made, the blind alleys he explored. She came to the conclusion this hadn’t been his design, not at first anyway.

“Take a shower.” Rosie didn’t even notice Charlie had left, now she had wet hair and a clean face. As Rosie undressed she saw her body in the mirror, still stained by blood. As she scrubbed the water ran almost red. Water streaked and ran down the glass cubicle. The image of the table shattering as she stabbed the raider flashed into her mind. Rosie drove it out and pulled on a soft white robe with a G embroidered on the chest.

“You ok?” Charlie asked through the open door.

“I’m fine.” Rosie didn’t lie, but she didn’t answer honestly. Charlie made eye contact through the mirror.

“Rosie, don’t say you’re fine if you’re not. And watch out for the quiet moments, that’s when they come back.” Charlie held a knowing look on her face. Rosie took the sound advice with a smile and a nod.